Can't complain

O I miss u all so much!

I have a Shakespeare midterm tomorrow (its about midnight and I haven't studied or outlined my essay yet) and so I decided the MESP blog was an amazing idea.

I have some great images in my head now of Alissa and her petra shirt and coffee and hemp necklace and Micah in his gallibeya shouting peace to a drunk guy on a snow drift. I imagine there were some arm motions involved.

As for my life, things are going pretty darn well. Arabic class is good. It turns out that Egyptian is slang, but there is a lot more overlap than I expected between Egyptian and Quranic arabic. Sabah Il Khir still works, wagib is still homework (but with a juh instead of guh), la'a is no and nam is yes but aywa still works as slang. I asked the two egyptian guys, and Phil, to study with our class tomorrow, so that should be fun. My ESL student Fatiha is doing great. I taught her coordinating AND correlating conjunctions on Monday and she was better at coming up with examples than I was. Haha. O I have a few funny middle eastern related stories to tell u all too, so here goes.

Friday me and my roommate Joanna went to the Middle Eastern store where we take arabic to get some supplies. I was contemplating the different cans of fuul beans when this middle eastern guy about our age came over and started telling us about the merits of a certain can of spicy fuul. We got some of that, some regular fuul, some coconut shisha, new coals, and fresh hummus. So anyway, Kadar, our arabic teacher, owns the store and came over to ring us up. The other guy said something "arbaa." I was so excited I recognized it and was telling Jo that when this guy proceeds to tell us, "we speak spanish here." I was like, "uhh, I was just in egypt last semester, so I understood." He was like, "no really, that was spanish." I was like, "I heard arba'a. It was not" I was not so easily fooled, haha. Then Kadar was telling us that we could take his devil child home with us for a weekend to practice arabic free of charge. Jo and I were not convinced... Then the random guy was like, "you can take me home for a week, I have all of spring break!" Hehe. O how I've missed the pick up lines from last semester. Anyway, Kadar was scandalized. He was like, "Ahmed!" So anyway, after that though we all did talk for awhile and it turns out this guy is from Iraq and speaks, "arabic arabic" whatever that means, everyone seems to say that that I talk to here.

O so other story. The reason I needed supplies is that Sunday night I had a dinner party and made egyptian food. You flat 5ers probably know but just so u all know, I don't cook. However, I felt like doing something new so I cooked Mis'aa and fuul and spicy fuul (from cans) and tomato and cucumber salad and fruit and batatas and pita bread and hummus. It was a lot of fun. There ended up being six of us (Phil noticably absent, off getting an internship or something). Unfortunately my housemate had a nervous breakdown right when everyone was arriving so I sent them out on a drive together for awhile, hehe, but it blew over. We sat on the floor with newspaper like my host family (I miss them), reached all over each other for the different stuff, and drank wine out of our plastic cups. Everyone liked it, or at least pretended. Then we smoked some hookah, listened to arabic music and the guys ended up wearing turbans (I guess Nahed's lessons in that regard came in handy) and kifayas, of their own free will. Pictures are on facebook...

So ya, o other funny story. So I'm finally over that guy that u all heard about last semester after much self-inflicted drama, confusion, facebook messages and (not exactly illuminating) talks with Micah, and recent talks with the dude himself that made me question what the heck I was ever thinking (not that he's a bad guy or anything, just basically my complete opposite). However, he was one of the guys at the dinner party wearing a turban and promised he was gonna wear the turban to class so I let him take it with when he left. Anyway, so I kind of harrassed him about it and so he ended up proposing that he'd meet me to study in our student center (Johnny's for those who know) wearing the turban. I had fallen asleep waiting for him and so I wake up to my phone ringing and this dutch guy wearing a turban and plaid standing right in front of me, that was quite a disorienting experience, but freakin hilarious.

so ya, such is life. O and today I went with my co-workers to this panel of calvin students and parents talking about being gay at calvin. It was great stuff. I was so proud of those people, and the billion people that crowded the lecture hall to listen, standing/sitting on the floor room only. I love Calvin.

I get to see Alissa soon I believe! And easter weekend tory and eunice (and whoever else is in chicago). I'm going home to cali for spring break with my housemates, so that should be cool, less than two weeks. Time is just flipping flying by.

On the theological front: Sunday I heard the best sermon I've heard in years. It was on God's wrath. I was concerned when he started off because of the topic and because he said the same thing one of the most obnoxious speakers we heard last semester said: "the bible doesn't say God is love love love or mercy mercy mercy, but it says he's holy holy holy." So I was ready for a "kill the palestinians, settle the holy land" kind of thing, but fortunately that was not the case. He just somehow made it very very clear that we are so full of sin and that the wrath of God totally justifiably builds up against us. Even when we don't feel bad, when we feel like God will understand our lazy bum selves, like I'm a good person in general. His wrath is still there and Jesus is salvation. God's so pissed at us because he loves us so much and we're screwing everything up. Anyway, I had forgotten how much was at stake and how Jesus really is saving me from something real. I can't just float along and expect God to love me for how good of a person I am. I'm not a good person. None of us are. So I needed to hear this. My roommate too and we had a really good talk about it. So that's that.

Ok this post is really long, but that's just how I roll... love u